Drawing

The past several weeks have seen very little finished, and quite a bit in process. It can be royally discouraging when supplier after supplier has none of the particular fabric you need, or the button you've been searching for; when prospective wedding-gown clients decide they'd rather go with a mass-produced dress; when, for all the work you're doing, there's nothing fresh to photograph and nothing new to go up in the shop. Weeks of alterations and hemming.

But these weeks are also necessary; ideas take time to grow, and just being in fabric, fixing old zippers, adjusting straps, and making buttonholes gives the time and space for new thoughts to form while my hands do familiar work.

I stretched out in a chum's yard a couple of days ago, while she planted herbs in long boxes. New, dark spring grass dampened my shirt and chilled my tummy as I listened to my dear friends talking. Pen and notebook in hand, I began drawing ideas out of the ground.

photography by photolodico